The Devils’ Rope Journal pre-release mix presented live by babel, crissxross & runran at the Interactive Futures 2007 conference in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, November 15th.

Below: setting up for our live presentation of The Devil’s Rope Journal

I had a great time at Interactive Futures earlier this month. When you spend most of your creative life alone and glued to your computer screen, it’s wonderful to be able to present digital media with your collaborators to a live audience – and so rewarding to hear them laugh in the right places! After collaborating online in the remix for the past year, it was good to spend a couple of intense days, before the conference, working together face-2-face with Randy Adams (runran) and Chris Joseph (babel) for the first time. Considering our improvisational process, it was amazing how everything came together. Presenting live meant that we could incorporate spoken word into our performance too, which was a fascinating experience. I felt we were performers emerging from the virtual world, but not becoming fully present in theatrical reality, preferring to remain creatures of the shadows and to merge our voices with the digital presence.

Here are some more examples of oddly disembodied but very human, real-time, virtual presences at Interactive Futures. It really does feel like you’re interacting in the future when you’re conversing, from North America, with European heads in a digital boxes!

IF07 was a fantastic experience all round. It was fascinating to see a variety of new media and to meet and listen to a range of artists, academics and creative techies. A good end-of-conference party too: The Exploding, Plastic & Inevitable redux! I even got an opportunity, albeit brief, to do a bit of veejaying, when Chris and Randy took a short break from their VJ controls.

It’s all very exciting, and I’m really looking forward to collaborating with Randy and Chris face-to-face for a change. We have a couple of days together to put the final touches to The Devil’s Rope before the festival/conference. Afterwords I’ll be able to relax and enjoy the great line up of artists, writers, performers and academics presenting at IF07, including familiar faces from the UK, Kate Pullinger and Sue Thomas.